74 



CANADIAN FOSSILS. 



place with reference to these formations in America. For such reasons 

 geolo^sts and palsoontologists whose vision is limited bj the European 

 rock formations, can scarcely avoid a feeling of scepticism as to the results 

 obtained in the study of these rocks in America ; and it is with the view of 

 keeping this distinctly before their minds, and of asserting the actual fact 

 that America is the typical region of these deposits, that I have suggested 

 the term Erian for this formation in the present memoir. 



Our knowledge of the flora of the Devonian, more especially in Eu- 

 rope, is as yet too imperfect to admit of the certain comparison of the 

 vegetation of diflfercnt areas. I shall therefore content myself with a 

 comparison of known facts, without venturing on general conclusions. 

 I have shown in my Acadian Geology that the Carboniferous Flora of Nova 

 Scotia and New Brunswick is very closely allied to that of Europe. Out 

 of 196 nominal species catalogued in that work we may reject forty-four 

 as uncertain, or as founded on fragments which may belong to species 

 bearing other names. Of the 152 actual species remaining, ninety-two 

 are common to Nova Scotia and to Europe, in so far as I have been 

 able to make comparisons. In general terms it may be stated that of the 

 coal plants of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, two-thirds occur on the 

 eastern side of the Atlantic as well. Crossing the Appalachian ridge we find 

 that only fifty-nine species, or rather more than one-third, are common 

 to Nova Scotia and the interior coal areas of the United States. Farther, 

 according to Dana's summary of the results of Newberry and Lesquereuz 

 up to 1860, out of 350 species of the United States Coal fields, 146 only 

 are found in Europe. Making every allowance for imperfect information 

 and errors in comparing species, these facts indicate that in the Carbon- 

 iferous period the Appalachians constituted a more important physical 

 barrier than the Atlantic, and that the Flora of the Atlantic slope of 

 America was much more closely allied to that of Europe than that of the 

 great internal plain of the American Continent. 



In the Devonian period, while a few species, like Pailophytonprinoept 

 and Lepidodendron Gaspianum are of continental distribution, the plants 

 of diSbrent localities, as for instance, those of Gasp^ and New Brunswick, 

 and those of the latter and New York, are in the main distinct, though 

 belonging to the same generic forms ; and almost the same statement may 

 'be made with reference to the comparison of any of these American areas 

 with those of Europe. This, no doubt, implies imperfect information ; 

 but if any general conclusion can be deduced from it, this must be that 

 already referred to, and stated in a former paper on this Flora,* that in 

 .the Devonian period there was a less uniform and monotonous flora in th« 



• Journal of Q«ol. Society^, Vol. XIX. 



